Recent Developments
December 18th, 2006Here’s an update on what’s happening in the world of Mama, Ph.D.:
We received over seventy essay submissions, and are reading them with great interest, trying to determine which fit best in what section;
We’re fine-tuning our book proposal and planning to send it out to publishers early in the New Year;
We, Elrena and Caroline, are planning to meet! We live 3,000 miles apart, but holiday plans will bring us within 100 miles of each other, so we are planning to brave holiday traffic and potentially bad weather, dragging our husbands and kids along for an afternoon of likely hectic and much-interrupted conversation at an aquarium. We wish you could all join us!
20/20 Update
November 14th, 2006Well, give ABC credit for trying, but their 20/20 report on working mothers was not the hard-hitting call for action one would hope for. Elizabeth Vargas hosted a toothless overview of the issues working mothers confront: the need for safe, affordable day care; paid maternity leave; flexible work schedules.
The interview with Joan Blades of MomsRising must have been cut, so the remaining experts included Senator Christopher Dodd (D, Connecticut) who is plain-spoken and compelling, reminding viewers that the government provides more oversight of pets and cars than daycare centers. But his voice was fairly well drowned out by a conservative talk radio host giving airtime to people who think mothers simply shouldn’t work, and the (female) deputy assistant Secretary of Labor, a bootstrap conservative who believes that individuals are responsible for saving their own money as a hedge against times when they cannot work, since the consequences to businesses for offering family benefits would be “dire.”
In fact, the statistics show that the 12% of companies offering paid maternity leave report increased profits and productivity when they do. It’s discouraging that these benefits need to be sold as “good for the company” to be adopted, but if that’s what it takes, I’ll take that as a start. Even the (female) VP of Human Resources at IBM downplayed the company’s apparently excellent benefits, including paid leave, flextime, and on-site daycare: “We don’t do these programs because we’re doing good for society, we do them because they’re good for IBM and good for IBM’s business.” Goodness, no, we wouldn’t want to do good for society!
Change will come, I hope, but it won’t come quickly with outlooks like those expressed on 20/20. The panel of “regular moms” concluded that advocating for corporate and government change is just “asking for help,” and added that women aren’t good at asking for help. “Well,” noted Vargas cheerfully, “that might need to change.” Still, her conclusion was less upbeat, characterizing work for change as just adding one more task to “our endless to-do list.” With that attitude, the U.S. will remain awhile longer in the fine company of Lesthoto, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland, the only other nations in the world without a national maternity leave program.
Motherhood & Work on TV!
November 10th, 2006I don’t foresee a tv show focussed on academic mothers and work anytime soon, but this is a good start: To mark the return from maternity leave of ABC correspondent, Elizabeth Vargas, 20/20 is airing a program about motherhood and work. The show features an interview with Joan Blades, co-founder of MomsRising. Tune in on Friday night, November 10th, at 10 p.m.
Then report back here on what you thought!
In Media Res
November 6th, 2006Sonya Huber submitted this piece for Mama, Ph.D., and I poached it for Literary Mama. Here’s just a taste:
I lose myself in my work, then I worry that I’ve been cheating: have I somehow made myself un-pregnant, broken the shallow membrane between my hopes and the multiple worlds in my head? If I stop thinking about the baby, does it die? If I leave my body for lines of text, who reminds the baby’s cells to divide, and who keeps it from getting lonely?
It’s week sixteen. Happy sweet sixteen, goat-baby. I promise I’ll stop calling you goat when we find out next month what you are. Goat-baby, I love you so much, but I’m glad you’re not here yet. Rather than counting down the weeks, I am banking against them, hoping for the full forty.
In the coffee shop, I met with an accomplished writer who’s also the mother of an eight-year-old. “Look, you can do it,” she said as she glanced down at her watch, timing the minutes until she had to go pick up her daughter. “Just make sure you have a draft of the book done before the baby comes. You think you’ll have time afterward, people always say, ‘Oh, I’ll write when the baby sleeps,’ but that’s bullshit. You’re going to be sleeping or staring at the baby. So get to work and have the most productive summer of your life.”
When friends ask me how I’m doing, I am honest only if I know them well. I say, “I’m panicked. I haven’t ever had this kind of a deadline before.” To one friend who is also a writer thinking about getting pregnant this year, I say, “You know, it feels like somehow December 2 is the date I’m going to die.” Then the disclaimers: “I mean, I know that’s sick, and of course, I don’t really think that…”
She nods. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s like, goodbye to everything.”
Click here to read more about life “In Media Res.”
How Did You Hear?
November 2nd, 2006Now that you’ve sent your essays off your desks and onto ours (and we’re reading them with equal measures of interest and awe at your achievements), tell us: how did you hear about this book? We know that some of you read the call for submissions on the Feminist Sociologist’s list, others saw it on a Women and Crime email list (and we’d love to know how the call for submissions found its way there!). We know some of you personally, and some of you found us via Literary Mama. But still, we’re curious… how did you hear? Please use the Comments section to let us know!
Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory
November 1st, 2006In the interest of reading more stories about how women attempt to combine family and work life, I’m posting this call for papers. Please respond to Emily Monosson at the email address below for more information.
I am editing a book about women, science and family, tentatively
titled Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory. I think the time is right for women to speak out about their different experiences, opportunities and personal choices as mothers and as scientists.
I am currently collecting essays. If you are interested in contributing and would like more information please respond to:
emonosson@verizon.net.
Maternity Leave
October 4th, 2006We’re delighted to announce that Mama, Ph.D. co-editor Elrena Evans is on maternity leave right now to enjoy the arrival of her baby boy. Caroline Grant will continue to respond to queries, but no official word on submissions will be available until Elrena is back at work.
Do Babies Matter?
September 15th, 2006Of course they do.
Your humble editors have three between us (a fourth due in a couple of weeks) and those children have made a significant impact on our academic careers. Elrena has already written a bit about this in her essay for Literary Mama, “Birthing: A Process in Vignettes (you can also find her piece in the wonderful new anthology, Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers) and of course she’ll have more to say in Mama, Ph.D. Meanwhile, Caroline landed a great job and discovered she was pregnant all in the same week, taught just long enough to earn 6 weeks maternity leave, and — 2 kids and 4+ years later — hasn’t been back. How she navigated her career crossroads will be described more fully in the book.
Babies mattered to us when we left the academy, and they matter to us even more now as we think about whether and when to return. That’s partly why we decided to organize this collection of essays. Now as we read the submissions that are pouring in, we’re learning dozens of other ways that babies have mattered in the career decisions of the amazing writers whose stories we’re gathering.
But if you have a head for numbers and really want to know exactly how much babies matter, please read the work of Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden, whose essays “Do Babies Matter: The Effect of Family Formation on the Life Long Careers of Academic Men and Women” and “Do Babies Matter: Closing the Baby Gap” offer the kinds of jaw-dropping statistics that make university administrators sit up and take notice.
I had the pleasure of meeting with Mary Ann Mason yesterday to discuss her research and the possibility of her contributing to Mama, Ph.D. Her writing is smart, clear, and — most importantly — it’s making a difference. Work like hers is helping to make higher education a more family-friendly environment. We expect the essays in Mama, Ph.D. will contribute to this important effort.
It’s Not Too Late!!
September 5th, 2006We’re still accepting queries until September 30th; final essays until October 31st. So let us hear from you!
A Note on Submissions
August 29th, 2006Dear Wonderful Contributors,
We are thrilled with the response we are getting to our call for submissions. We are amazed and truly humbled by your stories, and look forward to gathering them all together in our book.
Like many of you, however, we have small children who are very curious about the work we do. They are not, however, particularly careful editorial assistants. So please, so that we don’t lose track of who has written what, number the pages of your submissions. Type your name on each page. We wish that you could email us a staple, too, but if you number and name your pages, we will do our level best to keep them together.
(If you have already submitted an essay and received an acknowledgment from us, there is no need to resubmit your work.)
Thank you.
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